A Jeff Resnick Six Pack

by L. L. Bartlett

  Brushing past her, I headed back to the kitchen. The smooth walls and ceiling were practically vibrating. Eric’s childish laughter had once echoed in this room, though nothing of him remained there. I frowned; I still didn’t have the whole picture, and Dr. Marsh had rattled me.

  I opened all the cupboards. The remnants of Eric’s babyhood—plastic formula bottles and Barney sippy cups—had been stowed on the higher shelves.

  No Nestle’s Quik.

  “Any conclusions?” Richard asked.

  “Whatever I’m getting seems strongest in the kitchen.” I leaned against the counter, stared at the refrigerator covered with torn-out coloring book pages attached with yellowing Scotch tape. Something about it bothered me. I opened the door.

  Paula wasn’t taking care of herself. A quart of outdated skim milk, half a loaf of sliced white bread, a sagging pizza box and three two-liter bottles of diet cola looked lonely in the full-sized fridge. No chocolate milk. An opened box of Tater Tots, a sprinkling of damp crumbs, and a couple of ice trays were the only things in the freezer. Everything looked completely innocent, yet something was terribly wrong.

  “Think all the apartments are set up the same?” I asked Richard.

  He shrugged.

  Pushing away from the counter, I walked through the rooms one last time—just to make certain—then paused in the kitchen before heading into the building’s entryway. No trace of Eric, but something else lurked there.

  Hands thrust into her jacket pockets, Paula waited by the security door, looking pale and frightened. I couldn’t even muster a comforting smile for her.

  “Chocolate milk,” I said.

  She blinked.

  “Did Eric drink it?” I pressed.

  “He loved it, but was allergic to chocolate. I never had it in the house.”

  I glanced up the shadowy staircase. A wounded animal will always climb. Eric hadn’t been wounded, but something had lured him up those stairs. I took three steps and staggered against the banister when a knife-thrust of pain pierced the back of my head—fierce, but unlike the skull-pounding headaches these intuitive flashes usually brought.

  “You okay?” Richard asked, concerned. Was he feeling guilty for roping me into this?

  I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. “Who lives upstairs?” I asked Paula through gritted teeth.

  “Mark and Cheryl Spencer in apartment D. A retired widow, Mrs. Anna Jarowski, lives on the other side.”

  “They see Eric the day he disappeared?”

  Paula shook her head. “No.”

  I took another step. The heaviness clamped tighter around my chest. I’d felt something when I first entered the building, but I’d assumed it belonged to Paula.

  I’d been wrong.

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “They’ve been cleared,” Paula insisted.

  I didn’t budge.

  She bristled with impatience. “You came here to find answers about my son, not waste time questioning my neighbors. They’ve been cleared by the police, and badgered by the press.”

  “Paula,” Richard said gently. “It can’t hurt.”

  Finally she tore her gaze from mine and stormed back for her apartment, letting the door bang shut.

  Richard took the lead, leaving Dr. Marsh and me to follow. He went to knock on the first apartment door, but I shook my head. He gave me a quizzical look and I nodded toward the opposite door.

  Richard crossed the ten or so feet to the adjacent door and knocked. We waited. Were Richard and Dr. Marsh struck by the unnatural quiet in that building?

  The door opened on a chain. Steel gray, no-nonsense eyes peered at us. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Jarowski, I’m Doctor Alpert and this is Dr. Marsh,” Richard said with authority. “We’re from the University. May we speak with you?”

  Mrs. Jarowski blinked in surprise. “Did Dr. Adams send you?”

  Dr. Marsh gave Richard an inquisitive look, but he said nothing.

  Mrs. Jarowski looked at us with suspicion. “Can I see some identification?”

  “Of course,” Richard said, and reached into his coat pocket.

  “I left mine in my purse,” Dr. Marsh said.

  Mrs. Jarowski scrutinized Richard’s hospital security badge. “Please come in,” she said at last.

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be anywhere but this place that smelled of mothballs and sour cabbage.

  She ushered us inside, stepping into her kitchen. Anna Jarowski was a compact woman in her mid-sixties. Her short silver hair was caught back from her forehead with a barrette, like something out of the 1950s. Dressed in a faded housecoat, no make-up brightened her wan features, leaving her looking colorless and ill.

  She glanced at me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Jeffrey Resnick,” I said, forcing a smile, and shoved my hand at her.

  The woman eyed my outstretched hand, hesitated, then took it.

  Our eyes locked. Her hand convulsed around mine. Peering past the layers of her personality, I looked straight into her soul.

  A tremor ran through me. I pulled back my hand, my legs suddenly rubbery. Sweat soaked into my shirt collar and I took a shaky breath, hoping to quell the queasiness in my gut.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  She gestured toward the couch in the living room, but I lurched into the kitchen and fell into a maple chair at the worn Formica table. The others followed, leaning against the counters, looking like wallflowers at a dance. Mrs. Jarowski moved to stand in front of the refrigerator, arms at her side, body tense. The open floor plan allowed me to look into the apartment. Like the kitchen set, the rest of the furniture was shabby but immaculate. Mrs. Jarowski’s faded house dress was freshly ironed. She probably spent her days scrubbing the life out of things.

  I looked around the sterile kitchen, an exact replica of the room directly below us—the floor, the counters, the cupboards—everything, right down to the white plastic switch plates. Three embroidered dishtowels lined the oven door pull, Mrs. Jarowski’s only concession to decor. The tug of conflicting emotions was even stronger than downstairs. We looked at one another for a few moments in awkward silence.

  Mrs. Jarowski cleared her throat. “Are you a doctor, too?” she asked me.

  “You might say I’m an expert on headaches. Tell me about yours, Mrs. Jarowski. Migraines, aren’t they?”

  The old lady’s sharp eyes softened. “I’ve had a lot of tests, even a couple of CAT scans, but they’ve all been inconclusive. I’ve been told they’re due to stress. One doctor said they’re psychosomatic.”

  “I doubt that,” I said, winning a grateful nod. “They get pretty bad sometimes, don’t they?”

  She nodded again, looking hopeful.

  “I can sure identify with that. I got mugged last year. A teenager with a baseball bat cracked my skull. Since then I get some really bad ones. I’m working up to a doozie right now.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” she asked, an odd catch to her voice.

  “Nothing. Tell me about Eric Devlin.”

  Her back went rigid. “I’ve already told the police, I don’t know anything about his disappearance.”

  “His mother said he was ‘all boy,’ but I get the feeling he was a little hellion. A noisy kid. Kind of a brat, really.”

  Dr. Marsh glared at me as if I’d blasphemed God Almighty. The whole city had developed a reverence for the missing child.

  Mrs. Jarowski didn’t share that feeling.

  “He used to ride up and down the sidewalk on one of those big plastic tricycles for hours at a time. Up and down and up and down. They make one hell of a racket, don’t they?”

  Her lips tightened. The tension in that kitchen nearly crackled.

  My nausea cranked up a notch and I loosened my tie. On the verge of passing out, I rested my elbows on the table to steady myself.

  “When I have one of these sick heada
ches, I have to lie down in a dark room with absolute quiet. Otherwise I think I’d go insane. That ever happen to you?”

  Mrs. Jarowski’s gaze pinned me.

  The vision streaked before my mind’s eye: Eric, eyes round with anticipation, his small hand clutching the tumbler of chocolate milk, something his mother would never let him have. Paula calling to him from somewhere outside. The half empty glass falling to the spotless floor, shattering. Chocolate milk splashing the walls and cabinet doors.

  “It’s peaceful and quiet these days,” I said. “Like a morgue.” My gaze drifted to the full-sized refrigerator—back to her. I swallowed down bile. “You want to show me?”

  Her cheeks flushed. She wouldn’t look at me.

  Dr. Marsh and Richard looked at me in confusion. Mrs. Jarowski seemed to weigh the question, her solemn gaze focused on the floor.

  “The freezer, right?”

  Mrs. Jarowski’s anger slipped, replaced by a tremendous sense of guilt—but not, I noticed, remorse.

  “Dr. Alpert, maybe you should have a look.”

  She held her ground.

  Richard brushed past me, crossed the room in three steps. His eyes bored into hers and she backed down, moving aside. The freezer door swung open. A heavy, black plastic garbage bag filled the space. He worked on the twist tie, pulled back the plastic. His breath caught and he slammed the door, suddenly pale.

  “Holy Christ.”

  The quartz wall clock ticked loudly, but time seemed to stand still.

  At last Richard moved to the phone and punched 911. “I’m calling to report a body at 456 Weatherby, apartment C.”

  Richard swallowed as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. Dr. Marsh blinked in confused revulsion.

  Stony-faced, Mrs. Jarowski turned, her slippered feet scuffing across the vinyl floor as she headed for the living room. She sat down on her faded couch, picked up the remote control and turned on the television.

  Finally Richard hung up the phone.

  “Dr. Marsh, can you watch Mrs. J until the police get here?” I asked.

  She nodded, still looking shell-shocked.

  I squinted up at Richard. “Maybe you could help me to the bathroom. I don’t want to barf on Mrs. J’s nice clean floor.”

  Breathing shallowly, I sat back against the lumpy couch, a hand covering my eyes to blot out the piercing light. After more than an hour, two of my pills still hadn’t put a dent in the throbbing headache.

  The cops had already taken Mrs. Jarowski away. The ME arrived, and the crime photographer was still flashing pictures in the kitchen. The place was full of cops, and the murmur of a dozen voices drilled through my skull.

  “Can I get you something, Mr. Resnick?” Lieutenant Brewer of the Buffalo Metropolitan Police stood over me. The chunky, balding cop still seemed taken aback that his case had been broken by an outsider.

  I squinted up at him. “Yeah. Assure my privacy—don’t give the press my name. The last thing I want is publicity.”

  “Okay, but answer me this: how’d you know?”

  “I don’t know how it works, it just does.”

  “The old lady waived her rights. Said she heard Ms. Devlin had signed a new two-year lease and decided she’d had enough of the noise. She lured the kid up here and made him quiet—permanently.”

  “And the chocolate milk?” Richard asked me.

  “The lure of a forbidden treat. Mrs. J ground up sleeping pills, had him drink it,” I said. “When he was dopey, she planned to smother him.”

  I thought about it—remembered what I’d seen when I’d touched her. Fury gave her the strength to hold the boy, who’d struggled in those last minutes. She’d sealed his nose and mouth with a wad of freshly pressed linen dish towels, pinning him against the floor until his body slackened, his small chest no longer heaving. Then she’d heard Paula Devlin frantically calling for her son. Anna Jarowski sat beside the dead boy for a long time—triumphant in the knowledge she’d finally silenced her intolerably noisy neighbor.

  I looked up at Brewer. “I take it you haven’t searched the place yet.”

  “Call me paranoid, but I’m waiting for a warrant. No way do I want this thrown out on a technicality.”

  “You’ll find what’s left of the tricycle in one of the closets. She’s got a hacksaw. Been cutting it up and sneaking it out in the trash for the past eight months.”

  Dr. Marsh elbowed her way through the crowd in the kitchen. She’d been gone about an hour—breaking the news to the boy’s mother, no doubt.

  “How’s Paula?” Richard asked.

  “I gave her a sedative. Now that her mother’s here, I think she’ll be all right.” She looked at me. “How are you, Jeff?” Her icy veneer had melted, her best bedside manner now firmly in place.

  “Sick.”

  “But you’ve got to feel good about what you’ve done.”

  I frowned. “I made two women miserable. Why would that make me feel good?”

  She seemed puzzled by my answer, but I didn’t have the energy to explain it to her. “Dr. Marsh, you said another psychic came here—what did she tell Paula?”

  “That the boy was well and living in a small town down South, anxious to be back home with his mother.”

  Poor Paula.

  “You need me anymore?” I asked the detective.

  He shook his head. “Go home before you keel over.”

  I glanced at my brother. “Now would be a good time, Rich.”

  I moved on shaky legs. Richard and Dr. Marsh steadied me on the stairs. We ducked under the crime scene tape and they pushed me through the throng of press as we headed for Richard’s Lincoln Town Car.

  Dr. Marsh crushed her business card into my palm. “Call me.” Her voice was husky, excited, like a rock star’s groupie.

  Reporters and cameramen swarmed as she slammed the car door. Richard left her to deal with them, taking off with a squeal and leaving rubber on the asphalt.

  “Sharks,” he muttered.

  I leaned against the headrest and considered my first consultation. By all counts, a royal success.

  Then why did I feel so dirty?

  #

  Did Jeff make that call to Dr. Marsh? What happened to Paula Devlin? Found out by reading the 4th Jeff Resnick novel BOUND BY SUGGESTION.

  In exchange for helping her unlock the emotions of a disturbed young woman, psychiatrist Dr. Krista Marsh promises to cure Jeff Resnick's recurring headaches via hypnotism. Things start out rocky and quickly get worse when both the young girl and the doctor begin to manipulate Jeff. Soon he's experiencing the young woman's emotions and can't tell where hers leave off and his begin, and Krista has other reasons for ingratiating herself into Jeff's life. Meanwhile, Jeff’s brother Richard is vying for a chairman seat on the hospital’s fund-raising board. Two seemingly unrelated events that suddenly converge with deadly results.

  Read: Bound By Suggestion

  SPOOKED!

  The trick-or-treaters have gone home and now it's time for the adults to celebrate All Hallows Eve. When Maggie suggests they consult an Ouija board, Jeff Resnick thinks it'll be anything but fun. And when they conjure up a ghost from Jeff's past, the game turns dangerous for the most vulnerable person in his life. (This short story directly follows Dark Waters.)

  I flipped the switch and the brass lamps outside the big oak front door winked out. The candy was all gone. Halloween was over—at least for the neighborhood kids. It was time for the adults to kick back and have their turn.

  Mind you, I’d grown up in a part of Buffalo where kids didn’t go out at night—even with an adult escort—and I wasn’t one of the lucky ones who’d been loaded into the back of a van and driven to the ’burbs to enjoy that childhood pleasure, either. So except for parties at school, where I never dressed up in costume—there wasn’t any money for that trifle—Halloween had never really been on my holiday radar. Maggie and Brenda, however, seized any opportunity to celebrate.

  Th
e pumpkins, gourds, and other orange-and-yellow decorations had started showing up the second week of October. Brenda had decided to dress up as a witch—“a good witch,” she clarified—her flowing skirt and cape camouflaging the weight she hadn’t yet lost since giving birth three weeks before to my niece, the most beautiful baby in the world: Betsy Ruth Alpert. No brag; just fact. Before being settled in her bassinette an hour before, Betsy had been dressed in her first Halloween costume as Hello Kitty and I had taken at least two dozen photos of her. We’d already printed enough to fill two albums, and had hours of video chronicling her gassy smiles, pouts, squirms, cries, and snippets of her sleeping in heavenly peace.

  I bypassed the living room, turning out more lights as I went, and headed for my brother Richard’s study. That’s where my girlfriend Maggie, Richard, and Brenda, had camped for the evening. I found them parked around the coffee table, where Brenda was doling out slices of pizza on paper plates, accompanied by black napkins decorated with a jumble of snaggle-toothed orange pumpkins.

  “Did you get onions?” I asked, plopping down beside Maggie on the long leather couch. She looked cute dressed in a short black dress, black fishnet stockings, boots, and a tall pointed black witch’s hat. Later I hoped she might exchange the hat for a short white apron, turning her into a French maid.

  “Onions, peppers, mushrooms, sausage, and pepperoni,” Richard recited. “Isn’t that what you requested?”

  “Suggested,” I corrected him, taking possession of a slice goopy with what looked like a double helping of mozzarella cheese. “Thank you, Brenda.”

  Maggie handed me a sweating bottle of Labatt Blue. She was drinking her favorite whisky sour. Richard had single malt scotch on the rocks, and Brenda was savoring a glass of Pinot Grigio. She’d gone without wine for the better part of a year during her first pregnancy, which had ended in miscarriage, and then again this year. “How many kids did we have?” Richard asked, accepting a wedge of pizza.

  “Forty-seven,” Maggie reported, and took a bite of her own messy slice. “Mmm.”

  It was good pizza, with a nice chewy crust, and nothing tasted better with a cold beer.